The current CBA ties player costs to three “buckets”- League Media, NFL Ventures, and Local Revenues- with varying percentages going to the players for each bucket. However, the bigger thing is that the NFL has capped off player costs at 48.5% while also adding in a floor (a percentage it can not go lower than) of 47%. Continue reading CBA Suggestion Number 8: Improving the Revenue Split »

Every now and then you will hear about obscure CBA rules and perhaps none is more obscure than the funding rule. Article 26 (Salaries), Section 9 (Funding of Deferred and Guaranteed Contracts) discusses the funding rule which is a requirement that any guaranteed, other than injury guarantees, needs to be set aside in an escrow account, by each NFL team. This is one of those rules that has helped prevent players from negotiating guaranteed salaries in future NFL seasons because it requires so much liquidity up front by NFL owners. Continue reading CBA Suggestion Number 7: The Elimination of the Funding Rule »

While we are in favor of team’s facing consequences with the cap when it comes to decisions on contracts, there are scenarios where the sides would benefit from a potential “amnesty rule”. The amnesty rule would allow a team, under certain situations, to prevent the acceleration of any guaranteed or prorated (dead) money from hitting the salary cap. Continue reading CBA Suggestion Number 6: Salary Cap Amnesty Clause »

In the prior (2006-2012) CBA, teams were required to allocate a certain amount of costs to their salary cap every season. The 2011 CBA scrapped this rule in favor of allowing teams to “carry over” unlimited amounts of salary cap room to future seasons. The results, in general, have been more negative than positive. With teams having gigantic amounts of cap carryover compared to moderate amounts in the prior CBA, teams are finding it much easier to release players or decide to take a year or two off from the market, so they can load up at a later date. Teams have the ability to carry players on the franchise/transition tag with no problems giving them incredible leverage in negotiations.  The salary cap was also designed to bring some parity to the league and that is rarely happening these days so if they want to make it meaningful they have to bring changes to it. Continue reading CBA Suggestion Number 5: Reinstitute Salary Cap Minimum Spending »

The 2011 CBA brought about a new spending rule that pegged actual cash spending to the salary cap. While we can argue about the changes made regarding the way that the cap is calculated compared to the past, this change clearly increased spending relative to the cap by about 5%. There are two cash requirements in the current CBA. The first is a league wide spending requirement of 95% of the NFL salary cap over two four year periods (2013-2016 and 2017-2020). The second is that each team must spend to a minimum of at least 89% of the salary cap to make certain that the 95% number is not being met by a minority of teams. Continue reading CBA Suggestion Number 4: Raise League Wide and Team Minimum Spending Requirements »

One of the nice victories for the players in the last CBA negotiation was the quiet inclusion of standard injury protection for all multi-year contracted players. The rules are spelled out in Article 45 (Injury Protection) of the CBA, but the quick gist of it is that a player has 50% of his following year’s salary up to a maximum of $1.2 million guaranteed (in the 2019-2020 League Years) for injury in the event a football injury renders him unable to play. Teams cannot evade any injury protection by releasing a player early. There is also an extended injury protection benefit that covers the second season after an injury up to $575,000. Continue reading CBA Suggestion Number 3: Increase Mandatory Injury Protection »

While a clear focus of the next CBA negotiations should be shortening rookie contracts and rendering the Proven Performance Escalator (PPE) obsolete, if that cannot be done there has to at least be a fallback plan, a plan which begins to improve the system to make it fairer for all players. Continue reading CBA Suggestion Number 2: Revamp the Rookie Contract Rules »